146 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [maR. 18, 
rock, and in the region which I hope will be the first in America 
to produce tin upon a commercial scale, 
In the discussion, for which I find myself named upon the 
card this evening, I shall ‘‘ fight very shy” in regard to the geo- 
logical aspects. But there are one or two points which, as a 
chemist, have attracted my attention in visiting the locality and 
in reading of it. Then there is another point at which all 
Americans arrive sooner or later,—the question of the probability, 
or the possibility, of the enterprise paying. 
After looking over recently the report of Dr. Carpenter, of 
the Dakota School of Mines, in which he groups together 
the discussions and papers and varied experiences of the last ten 
years regarding the Dakota tin deposits of which we have heard 
so much,I have been impressed by the fact that Mr. Fur- 
MAN’S statements to-night are almost identical with those that 
are made about the Dakota deposits,—so much so that by reading 
a few extracts from Dr. Carpenter’s report it will be seen that 
what he says of Dakota is applicable to North Carolina; and 
perhaps the theory that Dr. Carpenter adduces here will be 
valuable in this connection. 
[Dr. Lepoux here read several passages from the report re- 
ferred to, quoted in partfrom Profs. N. H. Winchell, Wm. P. 
Blake, and the late Prof. Henry Newton. | 
‘Dr. Carpenter hitherto has been giving very largely the 
opinions of those who preceded him, but in the latter part of 
the book, where he puts forth his own ideas, it appears that 
there also they agree with Mr. FuRMAN’s account. 
The first discovery of tin in the Black Hills was due to an 
accident, as it was in North Carolina. 
I have read these extracts, although they apply to Dakota, 
and I think if IL had said nothing about Dakota and had been 
describing the North Carolina deposits, they would have been 
equally true. 
There is one point that bears upon the question of the com- 
mercial value of those veins, and that is the fact that we know 
to exist, that wherever tin has been worked in veins, the world 
over, it has also been worked with more or less success, usually 
more, in the gravels. And the same description which I have read 
